Q: One of my best friends from my childhood has started going down the wrong path. She used to be such a good girl and have her head on her shoulder and now she is starting to hang out with the wrong people and do drugs. It’s really changing her personality and I feel like our friendship is fading away because of it. I haven’t said anything to her yet because I just don’t know what to do… How should I let her know it’s bothering me and affecting our friendship?

Unfortunately at some point, most girls come into contact with drugs. It’s how you deal with it that matters. Your friend was one of those that has fallen into the trap of drugs and probably doesn’t realize what it’s doing to your friendship but most importantly herself. The best thing you can do is have a girls night and bring it up to her in a nice way. Definitely don’t be aggressive about it or accuse her of anything up front.

The first approach you can take is let her know that you’ve noticed her doing drugs and it makes you uncomfortable when you’re around her when she’s doing it. You don’t want to get involved with that and you can have fun other ways. Let her know that you don’t really like how she acts when she’s on them and she turns into another person. Let her know how important your friendship is to her and you want the best for her. That’s why you’re bringing it up and keep telling her you aren’t going to run away from your friendship. You just want to see her stop doing them because in the end, drugs never lead to a happy ending.

If she doesn’t stop doing them and it’s truly taking a toll on you… (what I mean by toll is: she is trying to get you to do drugs, she’s hurting you emotionally seeing her do it, you’re being put in not safe situations, other illegal things are happening in front of you that are against the law) you need to let her know you can’t hang out with her when she is doing them. If it comes to any of the points above, be smart and take the high road. Sometimes you can’t always change people and just have to let them learn on their own. But do tell your friend that you’re always there for her, you just can’t be around her anymore when she’s doing drugs or on drugs.